1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for capturing rolled fingerprint image, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for capturing rolled fingerprint image that quickly and clearly acquire a fingerprint region broader than a flat fingerprint and thus acquire more fingerprint information.
2. Discussion of Related Art
A biometric recognition method has uniqueness and high invariability, and thus is widely used for user authentication. In such a biometric recognition method, a fingerprint recognition method is a recognition method that is more old and generalized than other biometric recognition fields because it is convenient and simple to use.
Fingerprint recognition apparatuses are being actually used in various fields, which requires authentication for security and official settlement systems, such as access control, electronic commerce, financial transactions, and personal computers (PCs). As a fingerprint image acquiring method, a method that brings only the central portion of a fingerprint into contact with a fingerprint recognition apparatus to acquire only a flat fingerprint image is widely used at the present. Such a method is being widely used because image processing necessary for fingerprint recognition is relatively simple. However, the method cannot secure the entire image of a fingerprint, and thus, a recognition rate is reduced, and it is vulnerable to determine an imitation fingerprint.
To overcome such drawbacks, a method for capturing rolled fingerprint image is proposed. The method for capturing rolled fingerprint image is a method that brings a user's finger into contact with a fingerprint input window while rotating the finger and thus acquires a fingerprint image for an entire fingerprint. Such a method has a recognition rate higher than a method that generates only an image for a central portion of a fingerprint. However, the method for capturing rolled fingerprint image is not widely used because image processing is relatively complicated and a fingerprint can be lost in an image processing operation.
In a conventionally known rolled fingerprint acquiring method, there are a method (Korean Patent Publication No. 1997-0017033) that depends on a hardware apparatus and a method (Korean Patent Publication No. 1999-013325) that calculates and matches the directionality and feature point of time-series input information in units of a frame. Even in such conventional technology, a processing speed becomes slower due to a complicated image processing method, or it is difficult to acquire a clear image due to the characteristic of a fingerprint image.